


this place where I linger

by Quillori



Category: Dà táng hóng yán fù | Tang Dynasty Girl Poem (Music Video), Inspired by Music - Fandom, Tang Dynasty RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 12:21:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillori/pseuds/Quillori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>four meditations on love, literature and reality</p>
            </blockquote>





	this place where I linger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snowynight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowynight/gifts).



**Yu Xuanji**

The swallows dart to and fro, gathering river mud to build their nests. The road stretches away between fields of budding flowers and the air is heavy with the hum of bees. New life wells up each spring, green along the vine, and elegant young men walk out to inspect the newly blossoming beauty, admiring now this new flower, now that: the air itself is love sick with the heady spring, but only in my dreams do I find a lover who understands my heart.

Sadness always returns and returns again, thick and verdant as the new spring grass. Spring again replaces autumn, but the heart remains the same, and no new spring brings better news. 

In the spring rain, a messenger carries off a poem I have sent to you: if my heart is like the rain, will I too endure from year to year?

The river swells and sweeps inexorably off the broken twigs that clogged its bank: so too does love bear away our vulnerable hearts; as the river settles back and dwindles in the drier days, so too are we abandoned here and there, apart, as love sinks down and dies, obedient to the changing seasons.

The river fish pass too and fro: it is the coming and going of lovers that give them purpose - if lovers never parted, they would have no heartfelt messages to carry.

The letters I send to you - how will I ever know if they have reached you? The clouds dispersing, the river reflects the blue of the sky in its clear depths and I cannot tell which is the sky, which the reflection: so too the perfect poem reflects reality, but isn’t real. A lover’s words may seem sincere and yet mean nothing; from a poet’s brush, empty words may point to a deeper truth. 

I envy those who may reach out to pluck the cassia. Even in a time of political unrest, troubled by intrigue and strife, an accomplished statesman gains praise for his skilful exercise of power and his refined judgement of policy, like a boatman steering through a storm. But greatness may also be found in turning away: like one who walks through woody paths, intent on their goal, but then stops short to hear the sudden trill of the warbler, so the spring flowers catch my heart unawares and demand to be made into a poem. If you look truly at the world around you, you are passing through a world of gods: do not be distracted by mortal things but fix your eyes on the lofty mountains where the true Immortals dwell.

Even on the high peaks, the snow has melted away: I thought in winter that nothing could be more pure than clear ice, but now that it has melted into nothing I know that the nature of things is simpler even than the plain white snow. A true understanding sees through gaudy silk and gauze, reading at once what is hidden to the common run.

I tell myself to do without longing for friends and lovers, building a quiet retreat in my heart and casting off into the flowing water memories of returning geese and thoughts of the far North. From idle dreams of insubstantial things, I turn to study the books before me, hunting out Taoist secrets.

Secluded retreats are built by those who do not care for the passing crowds: accounts of their value spread and people come from miles around to see what was created solely for the sake of one solitary master, scrawling their thoughts everywhere on the simple walls and obscuring the original intent. So also later critics writing long commentaries on the thoughts of poets.

Tonight I sleep alone in an old room, under high rafters; lifting the silk bed-curtain it begins to crumble in my hand. It’s as though you paused only for a moment, just to listen a single birdsong, and when you turned around spring after spring had already passed: what is a moment among the Immortals is an entire lifetime here. So take care: for us, when the pink-tinged clouds disperse at sunset, they will not return.

The dawn light glancing through spring meadows is the spark of a new poem. Those who passed over the river will not return by the road, but if such a multitude didn’t go this way, never to return, who would write poems about the spring? Take up your treasure of gold and silver, your desire for a scholar’s reward, all thoughts of love and friendship: drown them in the new green wine. In time, the river settles and runs mirror-clear. In old poems, the abandoned wife in front of her mirror is too sick with grief, the young girl too sick with longing to bind up their hair with ornaments of moon-white jade - here in spring, surrounded by nature, reading a treasured book, let it be only the careless happiness of the moment for which you neglect to to fix the hairpin in your tousled hair.

**Shangguan Wan’er**

To me the mountain peaks don’t seem out of reach: I climb them as I please, scrambling up the rocks, whistling as I go. The clouds fall away below me, and I can look out over the entire land.

After examination, the most able officials are chosen: when they submit memorials to the throne my advice is sought. When decrees and rescripts are issued, I am asked to write them. The most admired poets submit to my judgement.

I write not only for myself, but create also the words for others, and my own brush turns with versatility to whatever subject is required. Do you speak of love? _Although you are a thousand leagues away, I long for you still: I have no message to send you but this, my sorrow at our long separation._ Do your thoughts turn to religious retreat? _Wandering through the hills, I follow the path by the winding stream; deep in seclusion, my heart grows steadily more serene._

My skill and talent allow me to say what I please. It is a mistake to think words are the plain account of the heart: I can fit my words to other’s thoughts, expressing what they should feel; the words I choose are accepted as the true report of what other people said.

Even when the long summer of my day draws at last to its close, and by the light of a single candle I pass on into the night, my name will be remembered, valued, my words collected and preserved: the emperor himself will select an outstanding man to preface my works. I who absorbed knowledge like the ocean; I who treasured ancient books above unblemished pearls was the equal of any man and will not be forgotten.

Through all the power struggles and intrigues of court, I held my own: even when my faction fell my memory was secure and my name not without honour. But the seasons change, and fashions with them, and even I, once arbiter, may fall from fashion’s favour, respected but unread. And when winter comes even to the throne I served, what will it avail that I had my place among official records now scattered and destroyed?

**Xue Tao**

The long rays of the evening sun slant through a garden by the River Jin; the droning chirr of autumn cicadas wells up in chorus. As the sun sinks slowly away, slipping into darkness, the distant hills grow an ever deeper green. The clear note of a temple chime marks the passing hour.

The river’s surface is smooth and still, but below it the water flows always on; above it the mist begins to rise, soon to be stained pink by the setting sun, and my thoughts turn to you.

In spring the flowers bloomed as pink and red, and now in autumn they wither and fall. Who had I to share such beauty with? Who is there now to share my grief? Next year the flowers will bud and die again, but the one who wrote of them will not be there. The meadows fill with flowers, but they cannot see each other’s show, nor commiserate as the nights turn cold.

As though the spring returned again, my desk is adrift with red peony petals, each crimson slip a note, powerful as a Taoist charm: with these words lovers may seem to see each other again, and speak softly each to each, though ten thousand leagues may lie between them. But even the river carp would tire, asked to bear a message so far as I fare in dreams. Immortals walk those distant hills; does there exist a talisman whereby the dead past may murmur to the living ear, and words now spoken speak again when this day too has joined the forgotten past? 

Those far off hills grow indistinct, their darkness blending into the darkening sky. Are they truly distant, or merely an illusion the changing light and dark creates in mortal eyes? Were there once those who shared my thoughts, whose feelings flowed with mine? The splendour of the past is lost; one day, as many years away as there are leagues between Chengdu and the cold Northern border, will such things be again? 

The fame of master poets lives on and all admire their wide-renowned scholarship. Surely this is a thing to be desired? But the empty heart knows that the evening mists disperse, their borrowed colour fading, proving insubstantial in the end. The traveler dreams of home, but though a thousand cicadas call one to another, each one cries out alone.

**Wu Zetian**

The archives fill with records of the past: ruler succeeds ruler and one dynasty gives way to the next. If the land prospers, can the ruler be said to be bad?

It is from the accounts of history we learn to pattern our behaviour: at my command the records of virtuous women were added to the store of knowledge. Now father and mother are honoured equally and the wise ruler is mother to the people.

No one comes to power without ambition: you cannot climb high unless you look up. But what is admired in one person may be condemned in the next and judgement does not fall equally on all. 

Who can tell what lies may later be told? The official record depends on the will of the ruler and the views of the writer. A thousand violent stories will spring from disturbed hearts, reflecting their fears - striving to reflect Truth, they reflect only themselves, and the true form of the past is lost from sight. 

For myself, I speak of compassion, devotion. As ruler, I speak of power. My words go out into the world, as majestic as the white-capped mountains in winter, but are they mountains or only the white mist that will be dispersed by the restless wind? While we are here, we should show benevolence, but whatever we may achieve survives only as distorted reflections in a river of rushing water that flows always away to the sea.


End file.
